Website restructuring completed

This is just a small post to inform you that my restructuring of Hacking Chinese is now complete. This is cooler than it sounds, because it actually means that a lot of new content has been added. This is especially good news for beginners, but should be interesting for others as well. I have done three things: a new category structure, new category pages and a new welcome page. Most changes have been gradual and alert readers might have noticed some of them already.

1. New category structure

The old category structure was ad hoc and developed at a time when I had around 20 articles on Hacking Chinese. I now have close to 100 and my understanding of the website and the articles has changed. I feel that the new category system both gives a clearer structure to the site and more information to new visitors. The old system contained several ambiguous category titles and some that were just bad. Check the new category titles in the list below (or in the menu to the right) and tell me what you think! It’s not too late to change specific category titles if you have better suggestions.

2. New category pages

This is where the new content is. I have written an introduction page for each category. These are meant to summarise the category’s content and point to the most important articles. All pages also contain a list of all articles in that category. In some cases, the page also contains quite a lot of information which aren’t in the articles themselves (check the beginner page for instance). Others are less fleshed-out at the moment, but this will change in the future. This is what the current category system looks like (click to see the new category pages):

This change has been visible for some time now, but I still want to mention it. The welcome page (or front page) has been changed. It now features all essential articles as a grid of thumbnails, which is hopefully gives visitors a better overview and is more enticing. The same kind of thumbnail grid is used on all the category pages as well, along with a traditional text-only list.

I need your help to spot problems

If you encounter any problems or find mistakes anywhere on Hacking Chinese, please let me know! I don’t have time to carefully proofread everything I write, at least not more than once, and even if I did, I might be blind to my own mistakes. If you see something you think needs fixing, please contact me!

4 Responses to Website restructuring completed

Oh and while I’m at it, how about a post regarding internet slang and how worthless it is to learn? Ever heard an overly enthusiastic English speaker try to use all sorts of internet slang in conversation? Yeah, like that.

Internet slang gets obsolete, quick. All your base are belong to us, anyone? LOLcats? Three Wolf Shirt? Much better to spend your time on vocabulary that doesn’t change. Unless you’re one of those magnificent speakers who has apparently unlimited time and an astounding memory.

I agree. To that same list you can add “hip” vocabulary found in textbooks that the authors (who are probably not young) thought sounded like cool youths, but actually was quite old even when the textbook was published a few years ago. There are so much else to learn and focusing on the core vocabulary gives you much more value. Learning and picking up slang naturally in context is something else, but that won’t happen unless your level is already quite advanced.

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